New garbage collection policy incurs setback
Lack of information dissemination or lack of cooperation on the part of the people.
Any of these two could be the reason why a lot of garbage were not collected since the city government implemented the “no segregation, no collection” policy Thursday last week.
Garbage trucks were only directed to collect segregated wastes placed on areas designated by the barangay.
Office of Public Services (OPS) chief Engr. Raul Gallo could not believe that the people are still unaware of the new garbage collection scheme since they have given enough time for the information campaign.
Gallo said his personnel had long been coordinating with barangay officials for the implementation of the “no segregation, no collection” policy. They have also distributed flyers and placed announcements in barangay centers relative to the new policy.
The city government also placed radio pluggings and newspaper advertisements with regard to the new garbage collection scheme.
Until yesterday many areas in the city proper were found to have uncollected garbage mounting beside the road and other areas. Apparently, they were not collected by the garbage trucks since the wastes were unsegregated.
Based on the new garbage collection policy color-coded trucks will collect the garbage in designated time and pick up areas of the barangay.
Gallo said the yellow-colored truck will pick up the yellow plastic bag or garbage bag tied with yellow string. The yellow-colored plastic bag indicates that the wastes inside the garbage bag are non-biodegradable. The non-biodegradable waste includes plastics, aluminum foils and diapers.
The partially painted green-truck will pick up biodegradable wastes such as kitchen wastes and other wastes which could be used in composting purposes.
The color-coded garbage truck will also collect segregated garbage from the different Material Recovery Facilities (MRF).
It can be observed, however, that not all of the 180 barangays have their own MRF. There are barangays which lack the area for MRF.
Gallo appealed to the barangay residents to comply with what is required in the new garbage collection scheme to avoid further problems. He also challenged barangay officials to lead their people to be law-abiding individuals.
Gallo said what is needed in this campaign is discipline on the part of the people in disposing their wastes. They must learn how to segregate their wastes, otherwise we will encounter serious problems, Gallo said in a radio interview.
The News Today learned that yesterday some barangays had called for a meeting with regard to the garbage collection problem.